Anders Behring Breivik planned to hunt down Labor Party politicians

Anders Behring Breivik, the right-wing extremist who killed dozens of left-wing youth activists in Norway told police he had originally planned to capture and kill leading Labor Party politicians whom he viewed as traitors, according to reports.

Anders Behring Breivik in a picture taken from the internet Photo: REUTERS

By Our Foreign Staff

2:48PM GMT 18 Nov 2011

Breivik reportedly told police his aim was to kill Gro Harlem Brundtland, the former Norwegian prime minister, Jonas Gahr Stoere, the foreign minister or Eskil Pedersen, head of the Labor Party's youth wing, according to the Norwegian VG tabloid, citing leaked interrogations.

Of those three, only Mr Pedersen was present when the 32-year-old Norwegian arrived at the Labor Party youth camp on July 22 after setting off a bomb that killed eight people in downtown Oslo. He survived the attack by Breivik but 69 other people were killed at the Utoya Island camp.

The newspaper's account paints a picture of a determined killer who had planned the attacks in minute detail and who became even more determined to carry out the massacre at Utoya once he realised that the government building he had bombed in Oslo didn't collapse.

VG said Breivik's initial plan was to take one of the leading Labor Party officials hostage at Utoya and read a death sentence before carrying out an execution. He had prepared a speech for that, which he later recited to investigators, the newspaper said.

Mr Gahr Stoere had visited Utoya on July 21, while Ms Brundtland had left the island just hours before Breivik arrived.

Police released a statement calling it "unfortunate" that classified documents from the investigation had leaked to the media. It said the documents had been made available to police, defence lawyers and lawyers representing survivors and the families of victims.

Police attorney Pal-Fredrik Hjort Kraby added "this is not information that to a large extent will harm the investigation" and said police would investigate the leak.

Spokesmen for Mr Gahr Stoere and Mr Pedersen declined to comment on the report. Ms Brundtland's spokesman in Norway did not immediately reply.

Breivik’s lawyer, Geir Lippestad, told the same newspaper that Utoya was his back-up planand he reverted to it because the bomb in Oslo failed to demolish the prime minister’s offices.

Breivik, who surrendered to a SWAT team on Utoya, has confessed to the attacks, but pleaded not guilty to terror charges, claiming he was in a state of war and therefore not criminally liable. At his first public court hearing Monday, he declared himself a military commander of a Norwegian resistance movement before being cut off by the judge.

In a 1,500-page document posted online before the attacks, Breivik laid out a blueprint for a nationalist revolution to overthrow governments he claims have let their countries down by allowing Muslim immigrants to settle in Europe.

Investigators believe Breivik plotted and carried out the attacks on his own and haven't found any evidence supporting his claims of belonging to a militant network of "Knights Templar."